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28.4.10

I was very pleased, as chief cook and bottle washer at '80s Actual, to receive an invitation to an event celebrating the 30th anniversary of the excellent Glade Shake 'n' Vac television ad.

Remember the wonderful Jenny Logan?

"It's all you have to do!Do the Shake 'n' Vac and put the freshness backDo the Shake 'n' Vac and put the freshness backWhen your carpet smells fresh, your room does tooEvery time you vacuum, remember what to do..."

The jingle took off, and soon we were all singing it, and trying to imitate Jenny's dance!

Sadly, I'm not able to make it to the 30th anniversary event, but I have such fond memories of the ad that I simply couldn't let the birthday pass unnoticed!

And did I ever use Shake 'n' Vac myself?

Well, in 1983, I moved into a furnished flat and the carpets were a little old and a little... well... "niffy".

So my girlfriend bought some Shake 'n' Vac and, although I'm not into advertising, I must say it lifted the frankly rather pongy atmosphere more than a little.

And, best of all, we did the Shake 'n' Vac and sang the song as we sprinkled it around!

27.4.10

A lovely e-mail from Cerys, who has read our recent material on the Australian soap Neighbours:

I loved that show in the '80s! It was a wow across England, Scotland and Wales - as big, if not bigger, than our home grown soaps. Those Ramsay Street years still stand tall in my memory, although some of the details are perhaps a little blurry!

I recall the wonderful fuddy duddy Harold Bishop making a comment about gambling being the "devil's tiddlywinks". Can you tell me the details?

As regards the original version of the theme tune, it was definitely "perfect plan" that was sung, not "perfect blend". The "blend" version began in the early 1990's.

Keep up the good work here - this is definitely the 1980's as they actually happened!

Thanks, Cerys! You're very kind.

In Neighbours, Harold Bishop commented to Henry Ramsay in 1988:

"Henry, you know I don't approve of gambling. Poker is the Devil's tiddlywinks!"

We never actually heard Harold say it as far as I'm aware - Henry reported the fact to Scott Robinson, with a wickedly accurate impersonation of Harold!

A very funny scene, although Scott wasn't amused, simply commenting that Harold was a "dag" and asking why he said things like that?

24.4.10

"Albion Market" was an English soap which centred on everyday life in a covered market somewhere around the Manchester area. In reality, the "Albion Market" set was a converted warehouse in Water Street, by the River Irwell, close to the Granada Television studios.Denis Parkin, the original designer of "Coronation Street", also designed the market set.Part of the warehouse used for "Albion Market" has been demolished in recent years, but over half of it remains to this day, although it appears to be in a poor state of repair.

A building next to the warehouse (since demolished) became Albion Market's "local", The Waterman's Arms, and also the market superintendent's office.

From the "Daily Mirror", August 8th, 1985.

Here's the girl in my soap..ROLL UP! Roll up! Here's a pair of street traders just setting up in business for ITV's latest soap opera "Albion Market". Biscuit bargains man John Michie cuddles up to his co-star in the £3 million series, sexy stall-holder Sally Baxter.Most of the cast are newcomers, but Granada TV has picked former "Coronation Street" stars David Hargreaves - Suzie Burchell's [sic] dad - and Carol Kaye, one of barman Fred Gee's girlfriends, to get the market bustling when the series starts this month.

"No we don't sell microwave ovens. What do you think this is - 'Arrod's?!!"

"Albion Market", ITV's second Lancashire based soap ("Coronation Street", of course, being the first), made its screen debut on 30 August 1985.

Rare "Albion Market" artifacts - two pages from a rehearsal script, issued on 15 November 1985. The episode was written by Andy Lynch, and broadcast in January 1986. Rehearsals took place on Wednesday 27 November 1985 from 10.00-17.00 hrs at the Water Street set, and on Thursday 28 November 1985 from 10.00 to 17.00 at the Bonded Warehouse at Granada TV Studios - which housed several interior sets for the series (although a large amount of interior filming also took place at the Water Street set).

In the photograph above, we see Morris Ransome and Geoff Travis squaring up to each other, whilst Morris' wife Miriam looks on.Geoff has been selling primulas in china pots, much to pot seller Morris' outrage.Morris was one of a new breed of soap men who were there to prove that men actually shared many of the faults traditionally associated with women.The wonderful Amos Brearly of "Emmerdale Farm" had been the lone soap male listening out for juicy items of gossip for years. In 1982 "Brookside" broke away completely from nosey, middle aged female stereotypes as it showed (albeit briefly) handsome young executive Roger Huntington taking an excessive interest in neighbours moving in next door - much to his wife's boredom."Brookside" later gave us Harry Cross - who hen-pecked his wife Edna and pal Ralph non-stop and was never happier than when interfering in his neighbours' business.And "Coronation Street" developed a male sticky beak in 1983, when Percy Sugden arrived.Were women now portrayed as having many of the faults traditionally associated with men? Er, no actually.Despite being a nag and a sticky beak, Morris never acted out of malice, and he and the gentle Miriam were one of Albion Market's most likeable pairings.

Spotty young nerd Keith Naylor has a quiet snigger as his boss, market superintendent Derek Owen, is inundated with problems.

Carol Broadbent and Lisa O'Shea thought Keith was a wally.

Carol shows Hoa her Valentine's cards and tells him about the tradition, whilst fervently hoping that spotty Keith is not one of her card senders!

As the series progressed, Keith matured a bit after being led astray by fascists and setting fire to the Sharma brothers' van. The realisation of the error of his ways, and trendy blonde streaks in his hair, seemed to mark a happier era for the spotty young misfit. But, sadly, he ended up marrying a complete nightmare.

Headed notepaper was issued to cast members.

Lynne Harrison was Lisa O'Shea's mother and sold things like Ajax and pan scrubs on Albion Market. Her husband, Roy, was about to be released from prison as the show began.

The first in a series of three Albion Market novels by Ray Evans - "Ticket Of Leave": Lynne and Roy Harrison face a new beginning...AS ROY IS RELEASED FROM PRISON A FIRE STRIKES ALBION MARKET...For Roy Harrison, just out of prison, working on his wife's stall in Albion Market was like being on a ticket of leave. Everyone was watching him - including his step-daughter Lisa.Raju Sharma was worried about Jaz. When would he realise that they were in the market to work, not to chat up pretty girls? He'd have to keep an eye on his handsome brother.Derek Owen, market superintendent, was on the lookout too. Who had burned down the Jessups' stall? Who was the petty thief? And where the hell was Keith's pet boa constrictor Boris?He sighed and moved on to more pressing problems. Morris was in the office again to complain that florist Geoff Travis was selling primulas - in china pots.Sometimes the traders in Albion Market acted like children - but Derek knew that their livelihood depended on his swift and fair decisions.

Book two - "Thorns And Roses" - Raju Sharma is keen to find brother Jaz a wife. How will Jaz react to plans for an arranged marriage?ROMANCE ON ALBION MARKET HELD MORE THORNS THAN ROSESWhile Derek Owen, market superintendent, worried about how the closure of yet another local factory would affect trade, his dozy assistant Keith pined after young Carol.All she did was insult him. It was obvious she fancied handsome Jaz Sharma.But Jazz had problems of his own. Who'd have thought he would fall for Meena, the girl his older brother Raju was pushing him to marry?The trouble was that Meena didn't believe in aranged marriages either - she wanted to break away from her strict parents and be independent.Meanwhile lonely Keith jumped at the chance to meet some real Speedway riders - even if they did have some funny ideas about politics.It was true he had no time for his rival Jaz - but at Oliver Shawcross's sinister prompting, things started to get a bit out of hand.

Book three -"Settling Debts":

KEITH HAD TO REPAY THE SHARMA BROTHERS... BUT HE KNEW THAT MONEY WASN'T ENOUGH

As soon as the Sharmas' van was in flames, Keith realized he'd made a terrible mistake. But what could he ever do to make it up?

He hated Oliver Shawcross and his fascist thugs now. They were still spreading race hate around the market - and Keith would have to act soon.

Hoa's gambling was getting out of hand again. Somehow his cousin Chan had to convince him that poker wasn't the way to help his father back in Vietnam.

If only she could talk to someone about it. Keith needed to talk too. He could sell his beloved motor-bike to pay back Jaz and Raju, but that didn't ease the terrible burden of guilt...

The "Albion Market" theme tune appeared on vinyl - performed by a group appropriately named Fair Deal.

In April 1986, Peggy Sagar wondered if she had done the right thing in taking Paul O'Donnell(Paul Beringer) on as cook at her Albion Marketcafe. His effortsat a full Englishbreakfast weresimply not up to scratch...

Paula Jacobs talked about "being" Peggy Sagar in a 1985 TV Times interview.

Peggy Sagar, who runs the the cafe in Albion Market, is a down-to-earth character with whom people instinctively share their troubles.

"I wish I had more of her qualities," says the modest Paula Jacobs, who plays Peggy. "She's staunch and sturdy, reacts well in a crisis and is warm without being sentimental.

"She's got a temper though," adds Paula with an approving chuckle.

Like Peggy, Paula enjoys a good laugh and a natter, and she can be discreet when secrets are revealed. "But I don't think I'd want to run a cafe," she admits, "although I love cooking for friends."

"My husband thinks I should go in for it in a serious way, but I wouldn't want to cook for people I didn't like, people who weren't polite.

"Peggy has to be nice even when she gets customers who are rude, so I'm glad I don't have her job. I suppose I'd learn to keep my mouth shut if I had to, but I think it's appalling when people are discourteous in a shop or restaurant.

Courtesy and a sense of humour, she feels, are the important qualities to have.

With these attributes, plus her skills in the kitchen, Paula should have little trouble making a success of running a cafe.

Granada was confident about the new soap's prospects. At the launch, David Plowright, Managing Director, invited the press to make a date for 2010, when, he predicted, Albion Market would be celebrating its silver jubilee.

But it was not to be. Albion Market ended in August 1986, after exactly 100 episodes, despite the involvement from its inception of producer Bill Podmore - the genius who had pulled Coronation Street out of the doldrums in the mid-70s.

So, what went wrong? I'm not sure. The show was well acted and had likeable characters, but in the 1980s there was a tremendous drive, started by Brookside, to make soaps more up-to-date and relevant and many "right on" soap scriptwriters were out to show just how grim life was in "Thatcher's Britain".

As a Tory-hating Socialist of the time, I applauded the "relevant" story-lines. Trouble is, looking back, I can now see that the shaggy dog was often too darned shaggy.

In Albion Market, we had the death of a neglected and disliked tramp, the attempted suicide of an unemployed man, an abandoned baby in the back of a van and a long-drawn out story about racism to "entertain" us. There was humour, but it all seemed a faintly uneasy mix.

For all its attempts at being multi-ethnic, in my humble opinion Albion Market took a far too issue-related approach when it came to two of its characters, brothers Jaz and Raju Sharma, who ran a fashion clothing stall.

The Sharmas were Ugandan Asians, thrown out by Idi Amin. Jaz was the younger and more carefree of the two brothers, Raju was older, married, and saw himself as taking on the mantle of responsibility from his deceased father.

With little time for character development, we saw Jaz thrown into a "relevant" story-line about arranged marriages. As it happened, this particular plot featured a bit of a twist and I found it interesting. But even before the arranged marriage story-line had ended, the Sharmas were heading into another "relevant" story-line - this time about racism.

The story-line was gritty and true to life, but I think it would have been far better if the Sharmas had had some time to breathe, if Raju's wife and the two brothers' mother and sister had been introduced earlier in the series, and the characters had been built up a little more as people, rather than becoming vehicles for "relevant" story-lines almost from the start.

So, to sum up, the first sixty or so episodes of Albion Market featured tales of racism, sudden death and attempted suicide, heavily wrapped in a Left Wing sub-text that told viewers life was sooo gloomy in Thatcher's Britain.

EastEnders, the other new soap of 1985, also had more than its fair share of gloomy storylines, but many of the characters were more compelling to watch - dynamic and abrasive (Lou Beale, for example!).

Albion Market was revamped - shoulder pads were imported, Tony Booth, former "scouse git" of Till Death Us Do Part, arrived on the scene as local pub landlord Ted Pilkington, and Simon Rouse (later of The Bill) appeared as Alan Curtis, the slimy new boss man. Then 1960s pop singer Helen Shapiro joined the cast as warm hearted and level headed Viv Harker, the new market hairdresser.

Suddenly, the Market seemed a livelier place... the clothes were jazzier, the atmosphere more upbeat - there was slightly more of a glitzy '80s atmosphere, replacing the original miserable "Thatcher is killing us all" vibe.

The new scheme of things was definitely intriguing. There were shoulder pads. And there was corruption.

But it was too late.

The show had been tossed around the schedules in the ITV regions, and was quickly ended.

Shame - I really liked some of the characters: Noreen Kershaw as fiery and done-down-by-the-men-in-her-life Lynne Harrison was a joy, as were Jewish china sellers Miriam and Morris Ransome, played by Carol Kaye and Bernard Spear, fearsome-but-good-hearted Peggy Sagar (the market cafe owner), played by Paula Jacobs, and daffy young cafe worker Carol Broadbent - a grand performance from Barbara Wilshere.

Market superintendent Derek Owen, played by David Hargreaves, and his assistant, Keith Naylor (Derek Hicks), were an amusing pair, and Pik-Sen Lim as Ly Nhu Chan, coping with her gambling-addicted cousin Hoa, had an aura of simplicity and kindness which I found enchanting.

Barbara Peirson as Eileen Travis, a woman approaching and finally reaching the end of her tether as her home life degenerated, was simply excellent. We felt her pain.

February 1986: Lynne Harrison grabs the chance of a cheap holiday in Spain.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since Albion Market ended, but the memories linger...

For me personally, Albion Market was part of a very happy era in my life, and my recollections of many things from back then, including the Market folk saga, are very sweet.

Gazing out across the River Irwell from Albion Market.

Eileen Travis (Barbara Peirson), wife of plant stall holder Geoff, had endured three miscarriages and, after numerous physical investigations, feeling more like a set of malfunctioning parts than a human being, decided to accept life without children.

The problem was Geoff's strong paternal instinct. He wanted to adopt. Eileen didn't. When Louise Todd (Kelly Lawrence), a teenage girl who had dumped her newborn child in the back of Geoff's van, returned to the scene, Geoff was keen for her and the child, named Jenny after his mother, to move in to the Travis house on a temporary basis.

Eileen reluctantly agreed.

Louise may have been young, but she was a product of the school of hard knocks and an arch-manipulator. Trouble brewed.

And Geoff failed to see his wife's agony when she saw him holding Jenny.

Geoff's paternal instinct blinded him to all else.

And finally he ended up totally alone.

Peggy Sagar gives two racist yobs their marching orders from her cafe...

Cafe staff Carol Broadbent and Phil Smith are aghast when...

... one of the yobs grabs a carving knife and holds it to Peggy's throat. Toy stall holder Oliver Shawcross, friend of Peggy, closet racist, and secretly on good terms with the vicious miscreants, bursts in and demands that the louts hand over the knife and leave.

They do, Oliver is hailed as a hero - and is horrified when Ly Nhu Chan and Phil both congratulate him.

Oliver came to a nasty end, but Malcolm Hebden, the man who played him, went on to great success as Norris Cole in "Coronation Street". Somebody else who appeared in "Albion Market" before going on to greater soap fame elsewhere was Michelle Collins, later Cindy Beale in "EastEnders". She did a couple of brief stints in the market soap as Diane Meadows, the pregnant partner of Morris and Miriam Ransome's son, Julian.

Simon Rouse, now far better known for his part in "The Bill", and 60s pop singer Helen Shapiro feature in this original Granada TV publicity photograph. Helen arrived on screen in June 1986 to play hairdresser Viv Harker. The original publicity blurb is shown below.

By the time Helen Shapiro joined the show, "Albion Market" did not have much longer to run. Helen made an excellent job of playing Viv - a warm and likeable character with a keen business sense and an interesting past. Simon Rouse made Alan Curtis a figure viewers could love to hate. Mr Curtis brought a great deal of intrigue to the market - and became romantically involved with two of the local ladies.

Larry and Brenda Rigg ran the Albion Market toy stall - with occasional help from teenage son Duane. Both Larry and Duane had a keen eye for money-making ventures and Larry, who had been a stallholder at the market for many years, had often strayed into shady deals. But in 1986, new market superintendent Alan Curtis, with a little help from a corrupt local police officer, got the better of Larry and forced the Riggs to leave Albion Market forever.

Another original publicity photograph. Middle aged and married Derek's relationship with Chan was one of the most interesting and original "Albion Market" storylines. Would Derek leave his wife? Would the relationship survive the age and cultural differences? Sadly, the show ended before we could find out.

The blurb - in those days publicity photographs were released with an explanatory blurb pasted on the back.

The End!

The final episode of Albion Market was broadcast on Sunday, 24/8/1986. Assistant market superintendent Keith Naylor married Louise Todd, who had previously shocked the market by dumping her new born baby in the back of trader Geoff Travis' van.

Keith's mother disapproved of the wedding and Louise's baby cried throughout the ceremony.

Included in the picture above are Keith and Louise (centre), long suffering Waterman's Arms barmaid Colette Johnson (Nimmy March - back row, second from left), market superintendent Derek Owen (David Hargreaves, who, incidently, also played Tom Darblay, husband of the originalJuliet Bravo) and, holding on to her hat, Peggy Sagar from the cafe.

The final scene saw the market regulars waving Keith and Louise off on their honeymoon.

On a visit to Manchester in the 1990s, my wife and I stumbled across the former Albion Market set.

Sadly shorn of its high hopes of soap glory, it had become a car park. More here.

15.4.10

An early 1980s magazine ad for Silver Sands Holiday Village, Caister, near Great Yarmouth, and a 1989 Monarch Flight 666 boarding pass...

What were holidays like for a young working class lad like me in the 1980s?

Well, where I went early in the decade was entirely different to where I went later...

You may have read that the era of holidays abroad truly began in the 1960s. Not if you were poor it didn't. Throughout my childhood in the '60s and '70s, we rarely had a holiday - I've counted four caravan camp bargain weeks in my first seventeen years, and an occasional day out in my step father's old rust-bucket.

We had no dosh.

It was in the late 1970s and early 1980s that we sampled the aforementioned bargain caravan holiday weeks - amidst the heady delights of the Silver Sands Holiday Village at Caister, near Great Yarmouth. We stayed in an (to us) lovely caravan (with black plastic-covered seating, some of it cracking to reveal yellow foam), frolicked in the sand dunes, splashed in the sea and lapped up the "entertainment" in the on-site club.

I remember, back in 1977, my cousin Sue won a disco dancing competition on-site and received a copy of Down Down by Status Quo as a prize. Talk about crumby. And it was already out of date. What a disappointment!

I also remember when Silver Sands installed a Space Invaders machine in 1980. This was really "trendy" and "with it" as the Invaders had only been invented (in Japan) in 1978 and the machines had only made their debut at UK trade shows in 1979. So, the burbling Invaders from outer space at Silver Sands in 1980 led to great excitement and intense competition. And vast outpourings of spending money.

Nipping over the dunes to that lovely sandy beach... black and white telly in the caravan (we still had black and white at home, too)...fish 'n' chips and ice cream... "fun" entertainers at the Silver Sands Show Bar...

Simpler times. Often rather grotty in the actual living. But nice to look back on.

1983 - Silver Sands, Caister and Sunbeach were all then owned by Ladbroke Holidays. Silver Sands Holiday Village was touted as being "one of the friendliest on the Norfolk Coast."

Next door to Silver Sands was the Caister Holiday Camp, England's very first holiday camp, as it happened, beginning as a socialist venture of John Fletcher Dodd in 1906.

There were many changes at the Caister Camp over the years, as accommodation moved from tents to caravans. The Eastern Daily Press reported at the time of the camp's 100th anniversary in 2006:

Now owned by Haven, the camp continues to host 100,000 guests a year - although now they have chalets rather than tents and caravans of yore.

Some of the proudest moments of the camp's history came in the 1980s when Prince Charles chose to take his fledgling Prince's Trust charity to Caister for an annual holiday for 400 underprivileged youngsters.

Yesterday officials read out a letter from the prince written to commemorate the centenary.

Jack Bennett, who was special events organiser at the camp in the 1980s, said yesterday: “Everyone was on a high when the prince came to town. Everyone wanted to be photographed with him and he was very gracious, meeting as many people as he could.

“He did, however, have this thing where he never wanted to enter and leave by the same door - which led to a lot of hasty carpentry just before his arrival.”

Also from 1987 the camp played host to annual conferences featuring up to 5000 evangelical Christians, including George Carey, then Archbishop of Canterbury. “Before agreeing to come they asked who visited the camp,” said Mr Bennett. “I said enthusiasts, fanatics and nuts. I said they were in the first group but for a while I thought I'd lost them.”

And the camp's smaller neighbour, dear old Silver Sands, my old haunt, has now been swept up and absorbed into the bigger (and better?) scheme of things on the Caister site.

By the late 1980s, I was taking my first foreign holidays - jetting off to Italy in 1988, and Tangier in 1989.

My grandparents wouldn't have dreamt of such a thing. Nor would my stick-in-the-mud parents.

And nor, after 1989, would I.

I was really a Silver Sands type of person. The new freedoms of the 1980s did appeal to me, but discovering just what calamari was whilst I was in the act of eating it in Italy in 1988 didnot.

Nor did flying. The merest hint of turbulence, and I simply knew that death was imminent.

For my holiday in Tangier in 1989, I discovered that the plane waiting on the tarmac for me was emblazoned "Monarch Flight 666".

I kid you not.

And so, since 1990, I've rediscovered the charms of Caister, Brighton, Blackpool and Hunstanton.

6.4.10

Newspaper ad from August 1983 (the REAL 1983!). The first front-loading video recorders are arriving (although the vast majority of people didn't have a VCR) and they're flippin' expensive. The Rumbelows ("We save you money and serve you right") try and sweeten the pill by offering a 12 inch Ferguson or Binatone black and white TV when you buy one.Somebody calling herself "Alex Drake" has written:

Was 1983 like the 1983 we are seeing in the new series of Ashes To Ashes?

Not that I recall, Alex. Come to that, I didn't find the Ashes To Ashes versions of 1981 and 1982 very near the mark either. Same thing with Life On Mars.

I won't criticise though.

Personally, I wouldn't fancy getting shot, but if I woke up in the early 1980s I'd be very happy indeed.

On a similar theme, Mark writes:

You seem to have a lot of 1980s newspaper stuff on here. Do you by any chance have access to the truth about how Sam Tyler died in 1980?

5.4.10

With a General Election in the offing, I thought it might be fun to slip back to 1983, to see how things were being done then.

Well, you could vote Maggie, of course, or how about Lord Sutch? Mind you, Maggie had a lot of support - apparently including comedian Kenny Everett, who waved his big hands about and said things like "Let's kick Michael Foot's stick away!" and "Let's bomb Russia!" to an audience of Young Conservatives.

Margaret Thatcher was riding high on The Falklands Factor, but there were some out there, newcomers to the world of politics, who would know future fame - or infamy if you prefer - like Tony Blair, standing as Labour candidate for Sedgefield, Durham.

Tony's wife, Cherie, was standing as Labour candidate for North Thanet.

Cherie's father, Anthony Booth of Till Death Us Do Part fame, shared his life with Pat Phoenix of Coronation Street fame. Pat was a great supporter of Old Labour.

From the Sunday People, 12/6/1983:It was two days BEFORE the actual voting, on a Gatwick-bound jet high over Lancashire, that Margaret Thatcher first celebrated her landslide election victory, and her elation is captured here in this superb picture.Ecstatic over the findings of a secret, £20,000 Tory opinion poll that showed her to be totally unbeatable, she stepped into the Press corps' compartment for a champagne-all-round party.Accompanied by members of her personal team she passed around the bottles as she joked with the writers and photographers.When the pilot announced the plane was due to land she shouted: "Oh dear, can't we go round again?"It's just like Air Canada - none of us wants to get off."And she roared with laughter as the chief stewardess announced: "We are now landing in Miami where the local time is 5pm and the temperature is 32 deg. Centigrade."Wednesday was like the end of term.By the time she had reached the Isle of Wight she felt secure enough to indulge in two of the most Over The Top gestures ever made by a British Prime Minister.She went ashore in a hovercraft, poised in the prow like an all-conquering Queen.Then she posed, arms aloft, in front of Britain's biggest Union Jack - an entire hangar door.It was all over by then. She knew it. And she didn't mind who else knew it either.But although the victory may have been a foregone conclusion, nothing had been left to chance.She had driven herself tirelessly and those around her to distraction as she sought to avoid the pitfalls of electioneering.There were rows, sometimes bitter arguments, that went on late into the night. She was not going to fail by anything she had left undone.The tensions even led at one stage to her shouting at Denis on the campaign bus.Those around her had groaned and sometimes grumbled.One or two of them got drunk as skunks but such was their loyalty they were always there next morning, ready to be driven into the ground all over again.The blackest day came a week before polling, Thursday June 2 - the date her advisers had said would be the most crucial of the campaign.That was the day the last batch of opinion polls was researched and her final three major speeches and four election articles published.From then on no more damage could be done TO the Tories - all they could inflict on themselves were "own goals" in the five major TV appearances Mrs Thatcher had still to make.As the tension crackled the tour went wrong again and in Central Office, according to one aide: "Everyone was fighting everyone else because there was no opposition to fight."It was awful - like a panic because there was nothing to panic about."On the Sunday came the findings of the Tories' own £20,000 poll that indicated her invincibility. An amazing 14-point lead over Labour in the Black Country clinched it.Despite not having seen the script before that evening she read the script of the final Election Broadcast off autocue four times in a row, each time with a different inflection in her voice, without fluffing her lines once."There is hardly an actress or a newscaster alive who could read for a total of 23 minutes without a hitch of any sort," said one technician."We all applauded, it was so good."From then on Mrs Thatcher did not stop bubbling.

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INTRODUCTION

The '80s Actual blog is designed to be an antidote to all those television shows and on-line articles of recent years which examine pop culture - and frequently get it hopelessly wrong! If you sat watching the BBC's "I Love The 1970s" and exclaimed over items being shown "I could swear that was 1968!" or "Wasn't that 1981?" chances are you were right.

If you look at certain '70s fan sites and think a lot of the material written about is actually from the '80s, you are almost certainly correct.

If on-line encyclopedia articles which state that pop culture of 1983 is really 1977, or similar, have you wishing for reality, then '80s Actual is for you.

There is a huge drive in the media and on-line to negate the 1980s, to attribute that decade's innovations and fond memories to other decades, and basically to present it as a completely vapid ten years, not worthy of examination.

I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's just comforting to have a decade people can scapegoat and declare "HORRIBLE"?

This blog is based on actual memories, media footage (thank you, YouTube!) and snippets of newspaper and magazine articles from the 1980s. If you read it here, I think you can rest assured it's accurate, though I can take no responsibility for the newspaper reports from the decade!The '80s Actual blog examines the decade's news stories - from the emergence of Lady Diana Spencer into the public eye in 1980, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Was it simply "The Greed Decade" as many like to claim? I think not - the '80s saw the emergence of yuppies, but also Red Wedge, the Greenham Common Peace Women, and increasing concern for the environment. It may be convenient to scapegoat the '80s as the cause of all known ills, but the reality of the decade was far different - absolute bedlam, as Right fought Left, idealism fought corporate ambition. The election ofRonald Reagan as American President in 1980, and his second victory in 1984, had a far more decisive effect on the international political landscape than the three successive general election victories of UK Prime MinisterMargaretThatcher in 1979, 1983 and 1987.

Musically, the 1980s saw the beginnings of House Music, the exciting and still evolving world of synths taking centre stage, the evolvement of Rap music into the fully-fledged Hip Hop scene, Band Aid and Live Aid, great Indie, startling Acid House, and Raves...

And there was so much more! The decade truly had something for everyone - and provided a welcome escape for a while from the long-running and boring saga of flared trousers as fashion, begun back in the 1960s!

There are also also '80s Actual sister blogs taking us back to the '70s and '60s - The Real 1970s and Spacehopper.The view of the 1980s presented here is from an English perspective - much of the original '80s material used is from England, but I hope this blog will prove useful and enjoyable to people in the other nations of the UK and much further afield.